March Roundup

A season where quality varied from the magnificent to the terrible, and that’s just in a single anime. Apart from a certain constant A-rank anime, every other show this season has been wildly inconsistent in from one episode to the next. In fact, the only consistent thing anime has managed to produce are poor endings. Coming from a guy whose blog is named after the glorious ending of Geass R2, I want my quality endings dammit!

A Grade: One of the tops of the year. Get ready for some fan­boy­ing here

A- Full Metal Alchem­ist: Brotherhood

It sure took them an awful long time to reach that promised day eh. And is this promised day meant to last right until the end of the series. Another 13 episodes lasting one day? Thankfully FMA isn’t the type of show to spend this one day having characters stare at each other and make complicated noises and occasional dull speeches. No, FMA decides the best thing to do is have the characters blast each other and everything to smithereens, or possibly trap them in a giant ass. Ah Pride, you really stole the show this past month.

A- Nodame Cantabile: Final

THIS!!! This past month was Nodame Cantabile at its absolute best. This is the Nodame that has one of those coveted spots in my top 30 (well I like to pretend they’re coveted anyway). OK, the ending was anti-climactic and a bit of a nothing ending, but the episodes prior to that were fantastic. Nodame and Chiaki. You don’t quite take over Horo and Lawrence for my favourite anime duo of all time but I think you can fend off Jinto and Lafiel for second place. At least, until I watch Banner of the Stars that is.

Not quite the bombastic ending to the first arc I was hoping for but Durarara still overall trumps everything else from the winter season. The prospect of seeing Izaya send Ikebukero into war all to fulfill his crazy idea of being sent to Valhalla, I mean, how could you not be stoked for that? More importantly, what plans does he have for Shizuo in that Cheshogo game of his? Exciting stuff indeed and I hope this arc keeps up the form the first arc set (apart from the ending).

B+ Darker than Black: Gaiden

These OVA’s have filled in a hell of a lot of questions about the start of the second season, most notably why Hei was so obsessed with Yin in the first place. We’re all shippers at heart so the sight of Hei so in love with Yin didn’t phase us even though that was never really present in the first season. The real question I have though is this: Why was this shown after the second season? Seriously, this would have worked way better before the second season.

B- Hanamaru Kindergarden

My prediction for Hanamaru Kindergarden at the start of the season was for the cuteness to be fun for the first few episodes before getting extremely dull and to be dropped around episode 8. In fact, these last few episodes proved that the cutesy toddler antics of the first half were hiding behind them a very good adult romance series. Although FFS Gainax, WHY COULDN’T THEY HAVE GOT TOGETHER AT THE END. Goddam you Yamamoto-sensei, why must you be so dense?

B- Cobra

There may have been only 10 people watching this anime but on the off-chance that one of you remaining 9 are actually reading this post, wasn’t that a great last arc to Cobra. This ended up being the biggest surprise of anything this season. I wasn’t even going to bother checking it out but did so on a whim, wasn’t planning to watch anymore than the first episode but found myself doing so and I’m damn glad I did. Although I do wish Cobra wasn’t quite so infallible.

C Grade: It’s good enough to keep watch­ing but it’s not that memorable

C+ Cross Game

Cross Game’s best episodes have long since past. The quality of this show was never in the baseball games, it was in the character interactions. Plus this ending has been obvious for a long time now. Like a football team who are 2-0 ahead and spend the last 10 minutes of the game playing it out to defend the lead, Cross Game had done it’s best work already and only needed to finish out what was a very enjoyable series. Still, it was a bit of an unexciting ending.

C+ Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

I have my problems with this. Big problems, as I’ve said before, most of them stemming from the fact that I’m an Evangelion fanboy and this didn’t feel like Evangelion. Too much winking at the fans, turning the show into train-wreck territory when EVA was never really suited for that in the first place, too much of it feeling out of place. I tried to enjoy it for what it is, as a separate entity from the original Evangelion, but I just couldn’t.

C Sora no Woto

Disappointing end to a series that flattered to deceive at many times but never rose to the levels it promised. It would produce one great episode followed by one poor episode with scary consistency. Even the last two episodes, episode 11 was excellent only to be followed by a poor episode 12. It’s sad to think that this will just go down in time as K-ON with guns, even though many people desperately tried to say otherwise, but that is unfortunately how this will be remembered.

D Grade: I’ve lost interest in this anime. If it’s a D then I’ve prob­ably dropped it

D- Baka to Test

Bleh, I’m sick of this show now. First 4-5 episodes were hilarious and I thought we had found the shock hit of the season. But after episode 5 I think it produced one funny episode and the rest boiled down to repeated gags and uninteresting ESB battles. There’s been a second season announced but I’m seriously considering not watching it. As glorious as Hideyoshi is, even his endless cross-dressing antics got old by the end.

E Grade: Unlike D grades where I drop out of dis­in­terest, E grades are dropped in Disgust.

E+ Heroman

…I’ll get back to this one later

F Grade: Any F stand­ard anime I would only watch 1 or 2 epis­odes of so god only know how an anime could last to the end of the month and still get an F but I’m sure it will hap­pen some day

Man, I loved the last two episodes of Cross Game. The part when they were remembering some parts of the past between pitches, the slow reveal of Kou’s confession, not showing the 160 kph pitch, I loved it all. Maybe because I’m not an aggressive shipper, but the scene with Aoba and Kou holding hands felt sweet and right for the two of them. The great finish raised my opinion of the show.

Hanamaru Kindergarten was just so empty for me. Inoffensive fluff that was sometimes cute and sometimes amusing, but i struggle to remember anything about it from more than two weeks ago. If it somehow became inordinately popular, we could call it K-ON!

Yeah, DtB confuses the heck out of me. We don’t know why the producers are telling the story the way they are, and I’m pretty confident they don’t know either, given how we’ve had consecutive Gainax Endings for each TV season.

Eh, I’m a bit too harsh on Cross Game at times. It has this aura of being an under-rated masterpiece so I feel like I’m the only person who will criticize it at times. But eh, the ending had this annoying inevitableness to it, as if they felt all their work had been done and didn’t need to do anything extra with the end. Which is slightly true but I would’ve liked at least something a bit less…inevitable to happen

Heh, DtB does have a lot in common with Evangelion when it comes to not knowing what the hell they are doing with the series. Nowhere near as good a series though

@Taka

Fuck yeah, Cobra fan! I will admit that I wish Cobra wasn’t quite so awesome at everything he did. I actually knew the perfume would come back into the story but I totally forgot about it until Cobra mentioned it again

ugh, i saw the first ova of dtb and was heavily disinterested with all the random hei x yin-ness. the action and plot looked like it was there just to give it a guise of an actual story. im not sure if i’ll continue with the rest yet.